Page 78 - Book of Abstracts

th
8 Biannual Conference on Chemistry - CHEM 08

Enhancement of Formic Acid Electro-Oxidation at Pt-

modified Nanocatalysts for the Direct Formic Acid Fuel
Cells

Islam M. Al-Akraa *, Ahmad M. Mohammad
1
2
1 Department of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, The British
University in Egypt, Cairo 11837, Egypt, Chemistry Department, Faculty of
2
Science, Cairo University, Cairo 12613, Egypt
Email: islam.ahmed@bue.edu.eg

ABSTRACT

The security of clean modern energy services is essential for socioeconomic
development and poverty eradication. Right now, the capability to secure
energy from green, affordable, and accessible resources stands among the
important criteria measuring the potential strength of governments and the
living standard they offer. For long time, fossil fuels (coal, petroleum and
natural gas) represented the major source in the world energy production and
consumption. However, fossil fuels, which were principally formed by
anaerobic decomposition of buried dead organisms typically for millions of
years, are expected soon to be deficient or even vanished, particularly with
the rapid growth of world’s population, the increase in the living standard of
whole societies, and the urgency to launch new industries in developing
countries that ultimately exceed the production capacity of fossil fuels. In
parallel, climate legislations are continuously issued to reduce CO2 emissions
that typically associate burning of fossil fuels, and policy actions are taken to
encourage renewable energy-based industries. These all are stimulating a
quick transition into a new era dealing with renewable clean energy systems.
In this regard, fuel cells (FCs) appeared promising not only as a
complimentary asset in renewable plants to restore excess electricity that is
typically saved in the form of hydrogen by passing through electrolyzers, but
also as power sources for several stationary, portable and emergency backup
power applications. In fact, the enhanced efficiency, reliability, robustness,
safety and moving flexibility of FCs have made them recommended for these
applications. In this study, different approaches for boosting the formic acid
(the green fuel for the fuel cells's technology) electro-oxidation will be
outlined and our recent results on nanostructured Pt-based catalysts will be
discussed.

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